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Trustee No. 2, of second company, "Corp." (which swings the system), is Chairman Denis J. Driscoll of Pennsylvania's Public Utilities Commission. Former Congressman Driscoll helped run the 1935 lobbying investigation which brought Associated's Napoleon, Howard C. Hopson, out into the open. To him goes credit for having dug up "little Elmer," the Warren (Pa.) Western Union messenger boy who caught his boss getting names out of the phone book (at the instance of Associated), to sign to indignant telegrams to Washington demanding that the holding-company bill be defeated. To Trustee Driscoll will...
Legendary are the corporate complications of Associated. Metaphysical, ingenious, a cost-accountant's flea-circus, they are as far above cash-register economics as Einstein is above arithmetic. Legendary also is the personality of Associated's creator, pudgy, laughing, strongarm Tactician Howard C. Hopson. Hopson learned the utility ropes as head of the Capitalization Division of New York State's progressive Public Service Commission, worked 15 hours a day, slept in his office, binged Homerically, ran up astronomical bills telephoning his Janizaries at all hours in all parts of the country, candidly spoke of his "collapsible securities...
...which has no direct interest in Associated; officials of the Chase National Bank, which has; Guaranty Trust Co.; Bankers Trust Co.; and CO. President Roger Whiteford, wrote Frank, has "been made president of that company at the instance of the sisters and a brother-in-law of Mr. Hopson." The SEC had decided (Commissioner Eicher again dissenting) that these facts did not constitute "statutory disqualification" of Mr. Hanes, but should be called to the attention of the Court...
...assets of the system were listed at about $7,000,000 in 1922, when they bought control of it. Flashing an ear-to-ear grin, but keeping his own counsel, close-mouthed Howard Hopson reached far & wide. By 1938, Associated had bought or formed some 500 corporations. The top of the pyramid had been jacked far into the sky as Builder Hopson shoved more operating companies into the base, inserted sub-holding companies near its apex. At one time, some bottom operating companies had to feed through eleven layers to get their tribute to the capstone. Today Associated...
Even before Howard Hopson fell hopelessly ill of heart disease more than a year ago, keeping Associated in a pyramid had become a prodigious balancing act. The Hopson "service" companies had siphoned off too much of the system's fat in better times. The Hopson lawyers, who had al ways kept one jump ahead of the Government in playing hide-&-seek among the hundreds of interlocking subsidiaries, got to the end of their legal inventions. When, in November, SEC ruled that registered holding companies and their subsidiaries could no longer draw dividends out of capital or unearned surplus without...